Court to rule within month on parolee housing zoning

Wednesday

Mar 5, 2014 at 6:08 PMMar 5, 2014 at 8:43 PM

By Dan PetrellaStaff Writer

Whether a Springfield business that provides temporary housing for parolees under contract with the Illinois Department of Corrections can continue operating may hinge on how an administrative hearing officer interprets what constitutes a family under the city’s zoning code.

City officials say House of Rainbow is violating city code by housing parolees in four properties on North 10th Street that are zoned for single-family homes and duplexes. City attorneys argued at a hearing Wednesday that the operation provides “transient housing” and would require a zoning change and special permission to operate each property as a “rehabilitation home.”

House of Rainbow owner David Kettelkamp asked the city council to approve those changes, but aldermen and Mayor Mike Houston in January voted 6-4 to reject that request for the homes at 921, 923, 933 and 1003 N. 10th St.

The city notified Kettelkamp of the alleged zoning violations after an inspection in May, which was the result of a complaint about possible building code violations, zoning administrator Matt McLaughlin testified at Wednesday’s hearing that lasted more than four hours.

Tom Immel, Kettelkamp’s attorney, said they only went through the zoning change process at the city’s request.

“That was going to be the way to avoid going through all this,” Immel said.

With that having failed, Immel moved forward with the argument that the House of Rainbow residents make up a family as defined in city code.

The code says a family is “one or more persons each related to one another by blood, marriage, or adoption, or is a group of not more than five persons not all so related occupying a single dwelling unit which is not a boardinghouse or lodging house.”

The residents meet that definition because each house has no more than five residents at any given time and because the homes do not meet the city’s definition of a boardinghouse or lodging house, Immel said.

He said the houses likewise aren’t rehabilitation homes because they don’t meet the definition, which is “a building or group of buildings providing a supervised residence for persons … as a condition of their parole or probation.”

Parolees may be offered the option of living at House of Rainbow if they are eligible for parole but don’t have a permanent address, but they are not required to do so, said Arthur Sutton, deputy chief of parole for the Illinois Department of Corrections during his testimony.

“The city code is screwed up,” Immel said. “They have a problem with their definitions.”

Assistant city attorney Linda O’Brien argued that the services Kettelkamp testified that he provides, such as transportation and mentoring on life skills and budgeting, and the transitional nature of the housing don’t jibe with current zoning of the homes.

“House of Rainbow, by the testimony and evidence submitted today, is a business concern that has a corporation contract with the Department of Corrections to provide transitional services and housing to parolees,” O’Brien said.

As for the city code’s definition of a family, O’Brien said that doesn’t apply to this situation.

It could, for example, apply to a group of five unrelated college students who decide to rent a house together, but it doesn’t apply to the House of Rainbow residents because they are assigned there by the Department of Corrections and because the facilities operate as a business, she said.

“This does not meet the rules and regulations for (a) … single-family and duplex district,” O’Brien said.

Hearing officer Roger Holmes, a retired Sangamon County associate judge, gave the city one week to reply to Immel’s written summary of his argument and gave Immel another week to respond to the city’s response.

Holmes said he expects to issue his written opinion by early April.

Not mentioned during Wednesday’s hearing were the pending cases against three men who allegedly committed murders while living at the homes owned by Kettelkamp.

Mark A. Brown was charged in June with killing Rebecca Cleaton at a home in the 900 block of North Ninth Street after removing his electronic ankle monitor.

Jermaine L. Davis and Sancho G. Mitchell were charged last week in the New Year’s Eve 2012 double murder of Larry Grice and Andrea Pocklington in the same block.

Immel said earlier this week that the Department of Corrections was no longer paying for Davis and Mitchell to stay at Kettelkamp’s homes at the time of the murders. They were renting directly from Kettelkamp and also had worked in his now-closed auto detailing shop, Immel said.

He said the issue wouldn’t come up at the hearing because it was not relevant to the zoning issue.